Smoking's pernicious impact worse with HIV Infection

The Body Pro reports smoking leads all preventable causes of death across the world.And it's more deadly in people with HIV than in HIV-negative people

This article by Mark Mascolini from The Center for AIDS Information & Advocacy also appeared in The Body Pro here.

Summary: Smoking exacts a huge toll on the health of everyone who becomes addicted to nicotine. That toll is greater in people with HIV, and not only because as a group they smoke more than the general population. Research shows that smoking subtracts more years from the life of a middle-aged person with HIV than HIV itself. Nicotine addiction raises the risk of allcause mortality more in HIV-positive smokers than in HIV-negative smokers.

A nationwide study in Denmark found that HIV-positive smokers run a 6 times higher risk of myocardial infarction than HIV-positive never-smokers, but current smoking only doubled the MI risk in HIV-negative people.

Research in HIV-positive and negative men and women in the United States found that HIV-positive smokers who had prior AIDS pneumonia had a 3.5-fold higher risk of lung cancer than HIV-negative smokers.

Metaanalysis of 18 studies involving more than 625,000 people with HIV found significantly higher rates of smoking-related cancer and infection-related cancer in HIV-positive people than in the general population.

People who quit smoking enjoy rapid declines in their risk of smoking-related disease. In the US general population, people who quit by age 40 cut their risk of smoking-related death by 90%.

Analysis of almost 5500 SMART trial participants determined that current HIV-positive smokers had a higher risk of five outcomes than former smokers with HIV: all-cause mortality, AIDS-related disease, major cardiovascular disease, non-AIDS cancer, and bacterial pneumonia.

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